Daughters and Mothers

Coffee table books are too often like today's movies: grandiose ideas as shallow as they are big. Yet despite its "high concept," this volume delivers beyond expectations. Jayne Wexler's photographs of mothers and daughters, like Lauren Cowen's words, are warm and personable; you really get to know the women pictured and profiled in these pages. Cartoonist Lynn Johnston, entertainer Eartha Kitt, and former Texas governor Ann Richards are among the celebrity moms who talk about their offspring in candid and amusing interviews, though most of the 30 families are everyday folks who could live next door.